John Lennon shot dead by Mark David Chapman in 1980 - NY Daily News Legendary Beatles singer shot dead by Mark David Chapman John Lennon shot dead by Mark David Chapman in 1980 NEW YORK DAILY NEWS email John Lennon of the Beatles is shown in this Dec. 1980 photo taken days before his death. He was scheduled to finish his next album, a follow up to “Double Fantasy," that was released a month earlier and marked his comback after five years in retirement. (AP) NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Sunday, December 7, 2014, 5:37 PM (Originally published by the Daily News on Dec. 9, 1980. This story was written by Patrick Doyle, Robert Lane and Hugh Bracken.) Former Beatle John Lennon, the 40-year-old lead singer of the most popular rock group in history, was shot to death last night as he stepped from a limousine outside his home in the Dakota, an exclusive apartment building on Central Park West and 72d St. Police arrested a suspect, “described as a local screwball,” minutes after the shooting and charged him with Lennon’s murder.

The “smirking” suspect, identified as Mark David Chapman, 25, of Hawaii, was seen in the vicinity of the Dakota for several hours before the shooting and reportedly had hounded Lennon for an autograph several times in the last three or four days. Lennon and his Japanese-born wife, Yoko Ono, were returning to their apartment from a recording session when the shots rang out. Lennon was taken to Roosevelt Hospital in a police radio car and was pronounced dead on arrival in the emergency room. “We tried to save him,” said Dr. Stephen Lynn, director of emergency services. “We opened his chest and massaged his heart, but he was virtually dead when they brought him in.” Lennon’s body was then taken to the Bellevue Hospital morgue for an autopsy. The life and death of John Lennon Police said Lennon was shot several times at close range inside the large iron gate on the W. 72d St. side of the building and was bleeding profusely when he was placed in the radio car. Lynn said Lennon was brought into the emergency room a few minutes before 11 p.m. and was pronounced dead at 11:07 p.m.

“Extensive resuscitation efforts were made, and despite transfusion and other methods, he could not be revived,” Lynn said. The doctor added that “significant damage had been done to a major vessel in the chest. There was a massive blood loss.” Police Officer James Moran, who drove the car that took Lennon to the hospital, said the singer “had no last words.” A witness to the shooting, Sean Strub, said he saw Chapman walk back and forth at the scene of the shooting and then drop a gun. Police said they later recovered a .38-caliber revolver near the courtyard. Front page of Tuesday, December 9, 1980, edition of the Daily News, with headline reading "John Lennon Slain Here - Ex-Beatle Shot; Nab Suspect." Shows Yoko Ono being helped from Roosevelt Hospital by David Geffen. (Kappock, Gene) John Lennon shot story (New York Daily News) Strub said Chapman, whom he described as pudgy and dressed in a brown jacket, scuffled with the police immediately after they arrived on the scene. “Chapman almost had a smirk on his face,” Strub said. A woman who identified herself as Nina McFadden of W.

94th St. said she heard the shots and then watched as Chapman paced back and forth and threw his jacket to the ground. “I saw John and Yoko step out of the limousine,” she said. “They walked inside the gate. Then I heard four or five shots. They were loud, ear-shattering. “I heard Yoko scream, ‘Help, help. Help him’,” McFadden said. “It was then that I saw the man with the gun and watched him drop it from his side to the ground,” McFadden said. John Lennon and his wife, Yoko Ono, arrive at The Hit Factory, a recording studio in New York City, the summer before Lennon was murdered outside the Dakota on Dec. 8th. (STEVE SANDS/AP) She said she then saw a man walk over to the building security guard and heard him say, “I would leave here if I were you.” Six policemen put Lennon into the car for the mile ride to the hospital.

The sobbing Yoko, who has told interviewers she is 47, was “very distraught” and “couldn’t believe” Lennon was dead, according to police and a large crowd of fans who gathered silently outside the hospital emergency room as word of Lennon’s death spread. Several hundred persons maintained a vigil outside the Dakota. Most carried radios and listened to news accounts of the singer’s death. Barbara Tyree, a maid who was taking care of two children on the ground floor of the apartment building, said she was shocked by the shots and terrified when she looked out the window into the courtyard. “The courtyard was suddenly filled with people,” she said. “It’s terrible, terrible.” Yoko Ono, center, and John Lennon, right, are shown with Allen Klein, president of ABKCO Industries Inc., and former Beatles manager. (AP) Ruth Ford, who lives in the fifth floor of the Dakota, said she was writing Christmas cards when she heard the shots. “I looked down into the yard from my kitchen,” she said. “I immediately called the police and Roosevelt Hospital.” She said she knew Lennon and Yoko but did not know Lennon was the shooting victim until the elevator man told her.

Lennon’s producer, Jack Douglas, who arrived at the hospital shortly after Lennon was pronounced dead, said the singer was scheduled soon to put the finishing touches on his next album. Lennon’s latest album “Double Fantasy,” cut with his wife, was released about a month ago and signaled his comeback after five years in retirement. It received generally good reviews, and the album’s hit single, “Starting Over,” soared to the top of the pop charts. The Beatles, disbanded in 1970 after seven phenomenal years together. The last time Lennon met with any of his fellow Beatles was Thanksgiving Day, when he and Ringo Starr dined at the Dakota. Tags: John Lennon is assassinated in New York City - Dec 08, 1980 - HISTORY.com John Lennon is assassinated in New York City Share this: John Lennon is assassinated in New York City Author John Lennon is assassinated in New York City URL Publisher A+E Networks Former Beatle John Lennon is shot and killed by Mark David Chapman on December 8, 1980.

For those who were listening to the radio on the evening of December 8, 1980, the news was probably broken by a disc jockey reading from the sketchy initial bulletin that came over the Associated Press newswire shortly after 11:25 p.m., Eastern Standard Time: “There’s a report that John Lennon has been shot. It happened in New York. On the Upper West Side.” In fact, Lennon had been declared dead some 10 minutes earlier in the emergency room of a Manhattan hospital—news that millions of Americans would receive, jarringly, from Monday Night Football announcer Howard Cosell, breaking into the regular commentary on that evening’s contest between the Miami Dolphins and New England Patriots: “An unspeakable tragedy, confirmed to us by ABC News in New York City: John Lennon, outside of his apartment building on the West Side of New York City…shot twice in the back, rushed to the Roosevelt Hospital, dead on arrival.” John Lennon and his wife, Yoko Ono, were returning home from a transfer session at a midtown Manhattan recording studio at approximately 10:50 p.m.

on this day in 1980, when they exited their limousine onto the West 72nd Street sidewalk just outside their apartment building, the now-famous Dakota. On nearly the same spot some six hours earlier, Lennon had signed his autograph on a copy of his new album, Double Fantasy, for the man who would soon shoot him dead: Mark David Chapman. In his statement to the authorities later that evening, the 25-year-old Chapman, whom police took into custody peaceably after finding him reading a copy of The Catcher in the Rye at the site of the shooting, said, “I’m sure the large part of me is Holden Caulfield, who is the main person in the book. The small part of me must be the Devil.” A worldwide outpouring of grief and tribute followed John Lennon’s assassination, culminating in a 10-minute silent vigil on December 14 that saw some 100,000 people gather in New York’s Central Park and tens of thousands of others in cities around the world.

Of Chapman, who pled guilty to Lennon’s killing and was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison, Yoko Ono would later say, “I don’t even want to think about him, and I usually don’t. Because it’s so irrelevant who pulled the trigger. That was not what was relevant. The fact that John’s gone is what we’re living with.” Related Videos John-Lennon.com - The Assassination Of John Lennon John-Lennon.com Unfinished Music, No. 1: Two Virgins 1969 Life with the Lions: Unfinished Music #2 1969 Live in New York City 1986 What are Your Favorite John Lennon Songs? (Pick One or More) All You Need Is Love Revolution You Got To Hide Your Love Away It's Only Love Current Results The Assassination Of John Lennon The scene outside New York's spooky old Dakota apartment building on the evening of December 8, 1980, was as surreal as it was horrifying. John Lennon, probably the world's most famous rock star, lay semiconscious, hemorrhaging from four flat-tipped bullets blasted into his back.

His wife Yoko Ono held his head in her arms and screamed (just like on her early albums). A few yards away a pudgy young man stood eerily still, peering down into a paperback book. Moments earlier he had dropped into a military firing stance - legs spread for maximum balance, two hands gripping his .38 revolver to steady his aim - and blown away the very best Beatle. Now he leafed lazily through the pages of the one novel even the most chronically stoned and voided-out ninth grader will actually read, J. D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye. The Dakota doorman shouted at the shooter, Mark David Chapman, "Do you know what you've done?" "I just shot John Lennon," Chapman replied, accurately enough. It was a tragedy of Kerkegaardian pointlessness.

There was only one apparent way to squeeze any sense from it; write it off as random violence by a "wacko." "He walked past me and then I heard in my head, 'Do it, do it, do it,' over and over again, saying 'Do it, do it, do it,' like that," Chapman, preternaturally serene, recalled in a BBC documentary several years after going to prison. "I don't remember aiming. I must have done, but I don't remember drawing a bead or whatever you call it. And I just pulled the trigger steady five times." Chapman described his feeling at the time of the shooting as "no emotion, no anger dead silence in the brain." His unnatural tone sounded all-too-familiar. British lawyer/journalist Fenton Bresler took it as a tip-off. Chapman was a brainwashed hit man carrying out someone else's contract.

"Mark David Chapman," writes Bresler, "is in many ways as much the victim of those who wanted to kill John Lennon as Lennon himself." Prosecutors, as a loss for motive, opted for the cliché: Chapman did it for the attention- the troublesome American preoccupation with grabbing that elusive fifteen minutes of propels many a daily-newspaper-journalist-cum-pop-sociologist into raptures of sanctimony. But Arthur O'Connor, the detective who spent more time with Chapman immediately following the murder than anyone else, saw it another way. "It is definitely illogical to say that Mark Committed the murder to make himself famous. He did not want to talk to the press from the very start. It's possible Mark could have been used by somebody. I saw him the night of the murder. I studied him intensely. He looked as if he could have been programmed." O'Connor was speaking to Bresler, and publicly for the first time. Bresler's book Who Killed John Lennon? Offers the most cogent argument that Lennon's murder was not the work of yet another "lone nut." Conspiracy theories abounded after the Lennon assassination, many rather cruelly fingering Yoko as the mastermind.

Another focused on Paul who, by this line of reasoning, blamed Yoko for engineering his arrest in Japan on reefer charges. The Lennon conspiracy turns up on radio talk shows with some frequency, where hosts fend off callers with the "Why bother to kill that guy?" defense. Only Bresler's thesis, that Chapman was a mind-controlled assassin manipulated by some right-wing element possibly connected to the newly elected (and not even inaugurated) Reagan apparatus of reaction, transcends the confines of pure speculation, extending into the realm of actual investigation. Even so, Bresler's book a little too often substitutes rhetorical questions ("What does that steady repetition of a voice saying 'Do it, do it, do it,' over and over again in Mark's head sound like to you?") for evidentiary argument. We can forgive him for that failing. Bresler tracked the case for eight years, conducted unprecedented interviews, and extracted a ream of previously unreleased government documents. But unlike researchers into the assassinations of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King, he did not have volumes of evidence gathered by any official investigation, even a flawed one, to fall back on.

The New York police had their man, the case was closed the very night of the murder - and, anyway, what political reason could possibly exist for gunning down the composer of "I Am the Walrus"? In building his case, Bresler established some key points that put the lie to any "Who would want to kill an aging rock star?" brush-off. Richard Nixon, his administration and other right-wing politicians (including ultraconservative ancient Senator Strom Thurmond, who personally memoed Attorney Gerneral John Mitcell on the matter) were fixated on what they saw as the Lennon problem. To them, the politically outspoken singer-songwriter was an insidious subversive of the worst kind, the famous and beloved kind. J. Edgar Hoover shared their concerns. One page of Lennon's FBI file bears the handwritten, block-lettered, under lined words, ALL EXTREMISTS SHOULD BE CONSIDERED DANGEROUS. The government went all-out to deny Lennon his longed-for permanent U.S. residency, and more than that, to deport him altogether (that was the subject of Thurmond's memo).

Lennon's FBI file - at nearly three hundred pages as chubby as Hoover himself - reveals that he was under "constant surveillance." Nor did the G-men keep a particularly low profile around the ex-Beatle, apparently attempting to harass him into silence or at least drive him nuts, similar to the tactic they had used on Martin Luther King, Jr., a few short but eventful years earlier. In late 1972, when the "surveillance" was at its peak, Lennon told humorist Paul Krassner, "Listen, if anything happens to Yoko and me, it was not an accident." The FBI and the CIA tracked Lennon at least from his "Free John Sinclair" concert in 1969 until 1976 - even though by then Lennon had won his immigration battle and dropped out of not only political activism but public life altogether into what turned out to be a five-year period of seclusion. His apartment was watched, he was followed, his phone was tapped. Placing a person under "constant surveillance" and ordering that person executed are admittedly two different things.

Nevertheless, Bresler's point is that the government did not consider John Lennon a harmless rock 'n' roller whose awkward entrance into the world of political activism often carried a high cringe factor (as in his Montreal "bed-in"). He was viewed as a dangerous radical who needed to be stopped. And in a way that official paranoia might have been justified, because as embarrassing as Lennon and Ono's political publicity stunts occasionally became, John Lennon was always capable of seizing the spotlight and speaking directly to millions of young people who venerated him. With unfettered access to the media, his power was immense, at least potentially so, and recognized by more experienced radicals like Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman, who linked themselves to Lennon, clinging to close that they made the rock star uncomfortable. Lennon was killed just four years after the intense FBI/CIA surveillance ceased. In those intermittent years, Jimmy Carter was president - a Democrat who kept the two gestapo-ish agencies more or less in check. But in December 1980, when John Lennon's first album in half a decade was high on the charts, Carter was a lame duck chief executive, having lost his reelection bid to Ronald Reagan.

Reagan's campaign was managed by career secret agent William Casey, who under President Reagan became the CIA's most freewheeling chief since Allen Dulles. The new far-right administration would reassemble the intelligence services and grant them a cheerful carte blanche. The forces that tried desperately to neutralize Lennon for at least seven years lost power in 1976. Lennon's government dossier ends in that year. In 1980, as those forces were preparing to retake control of the government, "dangerous extremist" John Lennon emerged from retirement. Within a few months he was murdered. The paper trail that might support the conspiracy theory is a little thin, however. It doesn't extend much beyond the airline ticket found in Chapman's hotel room; a Hawaii-New York connection departing December 5. But Chapman had actually purchased a Hawaii-Chicago ticket to depart December 2, with no connecting flight. The ticket found after his arrest had apparently been altered. None of his friends knew that he traveled on to New York. They thought he went to Chicago for a three-day stay.

Bresler concludes that the Lennon assassination, which, as Chapman himself noted in a rare interview, "ended an era," bears similarities to another assassination that took place twelve years earlier: the murder of Robert F. Kennedy. RFK's apparent lone killer, Sirhan Sirhan, and Chapman (coincidentally?) shared a defense psychiatrist. But while Dr. Bernard Diamond couldn't skirt the obvious fact that Sirhan was under hypnosis (Diamond wrote it off as self-hypnosis), he labeled Chapman a "paranoid schizophrenic." The court disagreed. Chapman even now has never had more than routine psychiatric care since entering his guilty plea. He was not sent to a mental hospital, but to Attica State Prison. He was judged legally "rational." Bresler clears up a few widely disseminated misconceptions about Mark David Chapman: While any mention of his name is now accompanied by the phrase "deranged fan," Chapman was anything but. He was no more or less ardent a Beatles/Lennon fan than anyone of his generation. His real rock hero was Todd Rundgren, a cynical studio craftsman who could not be further from Lennon in artistic sensibility.

Notwithstanding Chapman's announcement months after the murder that he "killed Lennon to gain prominence to promote the reading of The Catcher in the Rye," Chapman never exhibited strong feelings about the novel until shortly before the shooting. (Catcher, Bresler muses, may have been used as a device to trigger Chapman's "programming.") After the murder, major media ran bizarre stories of Chapman's supposed growing identification with John Lennon - at one point he even "re-baptized" himself as Lennon, according to Newsweek. These stories were all quite fascinating, but there was no evidence to back any of them up. (It is true that when Chapman quit his last job he signed out as "John Lennon," then crossed the name out, but Bresler interprets this, reasonably, as Chapman saying, "John Lennon, I am going to kill you," rather than "John Lennon, I am you." Chapman was not a "longer." He was for most of his life a normally social individual and a camp counselor who had a special rapport with kids.

Bresler also notes that when Chapman signed up for a YMCA overseas program, he selected an odd destination: Beirut - a perfect place, says Bresler, for Chapman, a once gentle soul, to be "blooded," that is, desensitized to violence. A final note to the mystery of Mark David Chapman: As he was ready to go to trial and his diligent public defender was winding up six months spent assembling Chapman's defense, the accused killer suddenly decided to change his plea to guilty. His lawyer was perplexed and more than a little perturbed. But Chapman was determined. He said he was acting on instructions from a "small male voice" that spoke to him in his cell. Chapman interpreted it as the voice of God. John Lennon Message Board Post | Read For me, John is still alive. I believe he's still with us, looking over Yoko, Sean and Julian. If you are reading this John, remember that I will never loose faith in you, and say hi to George for us. Even though I'm only 13, you're forever going to be my hero, because of giving your life for Love and Peace.

I'm a great fan of The Beatles, and I beleive that they were the best rock & roll group in music history. Not many people my age understand me well. They don't understand why I like The Beatles and why John Lennon is forever going to be my hero. They don't understand why a 13 year old girl would be into The Beatles, John Lennon and George Harrison. All I've got to say about this Message Board, is that it helped me in a sort of way, tell the whole world how I fell about a man, who for no reasons, died. Remember, War Is Over If You Want It. Jo, a 13 year old girl from Canada BBC ON THIS DAY | 8 | 1980: John Lennon shot dead About This Site | Text Only 1980: John Lennon shot dead Former Beatle John Lennon has been shot dead by an unknown gunman who opened fire outside the musician's New York apartment. The 40-year-old was shot several times as he entered the Dakota, his luxury apartment building on Manhattan's Upper West Side, opposite Central Park, at 2300 local time.

He was rushed in a police car to St Luke's Roosevelt Hospital Center, where he died. His wife, Yoko Ono, who is understood to have witnessed the attack, was with him. Shots heard A police spokesman said a suspect was in custody, but he had no other details of the shooting. "This was no robbery," the spokesman said, adding that Mr Lennon was probably shot by a "deranged" person. Witness reports say at least three shots were fired and others have claimed they heard six. There are also reports Mr Lennon staggered up six steps into the vestibule after he was shot, before collapsing. Jack Douglas, Lennon's producer, said he and the Lennons had been at a studio called the Record Plant in mid-town earlier in the evening and Lennon left at 2230. Mr Lennon said he planned to have some dinner and then return home, Mr Douglas said. Fans at scene The Lennons are said to have left their limousine on the street and walked up the driveway when the gunman opened fire. It is unclear whether the man had been lying in wait in the entrance to the building for Mr Lennon, or whether he came up behind him.

Witnesses describe the gunman as a "pudgy kind of man", 35 to 40 years old with brown hair. Other former band members, Paul McCartney, guitarist George Harrison and drummer Ringo Starr are thought to have been informed of Lennon's murder. Fans have already begun arriving at the scene, many still unaware Lennon has died. Mr Lennon is survived by his wife, their son Sean, and his son from a previous marriage, Julian. Dec. 8: John Lennon Shot, Killed 1980 - ABC News ABC News Dec. 8: John Lennon Shot, Killed 1980 December 8, 2011 Copy 1980 John Lennon Killed The Beatles ' musician John Lennon was shot and killed outside of his New York City apartment on the night of Dec. 8, 1980. Lennon and wife Yoko Ono were returning from the recording studio to their home at The Dakota when 25-year-old crazed fan Mark David Chapman shot him at close range. Earlier in the day Chapman had been hanging around The Dakota with other fans and asked Lennon for an autograph. When The Beatles broke up in 1970, John Lennon focused on humanitarian and social activism.

After the 1975 birth of his son Sean, John Lennon retreated from public eye to concentrate on his family. John Lennon and Yoko Ono's 1980 " Double-Fantasy " album was planned to be his comeback in the music scene. Lennon was murdered just weeks after "Double-Fantasy" was released. The "Imagine" mosaic is shown, in this Dec. 7, 2000 file photo in the area known as "Strawberry Fields" in New York's Central Park. (Spencer Platt/Newsmakers/Getty Images) Fans pay tribute to Lennon at Central Park 's "Imagine" sign, located at the Strawberry Fields region. Strawberry Fields opened on what would have been Lennon's 45th birthday, Oct. 9, 1985. Large crowds gather each year for a vigil on the anniversary of his death, but on any given day visitors will find roses laid around the sign and fans snapping photos of themselves with the iconic image. Explore John Lennon's legacy and leave your own tribute at the Imagine Peace Website . 2000 Mark David Chapman Interview Twenty years after Lennon's death, Barbara Walters revisited her 1992 interview with Mark David Chapman.

This was the killer's first televised interview. Chapman was sentenced t0 20 years to life for killing Lennon and is serving his time at New York's Attica Prison. He is one of the many infamous killers said to have carried a copy of J.D. Salinger's "Catcher in the Rye" with him. When Barbara Walters asked why he did it, Chapman replied with a straight face, "I thought by killing him, I would acquire his fame." The Assassination of John Lennon The Assassination of John Lennon The Assassination of John Lennon Founding Member of the Beatles Shot by Mark David Chapman Portrait of Japanese-born artist and musician Yoko Ono and British musician and artist John Lennon. (December 1968). (Photo by Susan Wood/Getty Images) By Tarkan Rosenberg, Contributing Writer Updated July 29, 2016. John Lennon — founding member of the Beatles , and one of the most beloved and famous music legends of all time — died on December 8, 1980, after being shot four times by a crazed fan in the carriageway of his New York City apartment building.

Many of the events that led to his tragic and untimely death remain unclear and decades after his murder, people still struggle to understand what motivated his killer, 25-year-old Mark David Chapman, to pull the trigger on that fateful night. Lennon in the 1970s The Beatles were arguably the most successful and influential group of the 1960s , perhaps of all time. Nevertheless, after spending a decade at the top of the charts, producing hit after hit, the band called it quits in 1970, and all four of its members – John Lennon, Paul McCartney , George Harrison , and Ringo Starr -- moved on to launch solo careers. Throughout the early ‘70s, Lennon recorded several albums and produced hits like the instant classic Imagine . continue reading below our video Test Your General Science Knowledge He had moved permanently to New York City with his wife Yoko Ono and taken up residence at the Dakota, a fancy, old apartment building located at the northwest corner of 72nd Street and Central Park West. The Dakota was known for housing many celebrities. By the mid-1970s, however, Lennon had given up music.

And though he claimed he did so to become a stay-at-home dad to his newborn son, Sean, many of his fans, as well as the media, speculated the singer might have sunk into a creative slump. Several articles published during this period painted the former Beatle as a recluse and a has-been, who seemed more interested in managing his millions and holing up in his decadent New York apartment than in writing songs. One of these articles, published in Esquire in 1980, would prompt a pudgy, disturbed young man from Hawaii, to travel to New York City and commit murder. Mark David Chapman: From Drugs to Jesus Mark David Chapman was born in Fort Worth, Texas on May 10, 1955, but lived in Decatur, Georgia from the age of seven. Mark’s dad, David Chapman, was in the Air Force, and his mom, Diane Chapman, was a nurse. A sister was born seven years after Mark. From the outside, the Chapmans looked like a typical American family; however, inside, there was trouble. Mark’s dad, David, was an emotionally distant man, not showing his emotions even to his son. Worse, David would often hit Diane.

Mark could often hear his mom screaming, but was unable to stop his dad. In school, Mark, who was a bit pudgy and not good at sports, was picked on and called names. All these feelings of helplessness led to Mark having strange fantasies, starting very early on in his childhood. By the age of ten he was imagining and interacting with an entire civilization of tiny people he believed lived inside the walls of his bedroom. He would have imaginary interactions with these little people, and later came to see them as his subjects and himself as their king. This fantasy continued until Chapman was 25, the same year he gunned down John Lennon. Chapman managed to keep such strange tendencies to himself, however, and seemed like a normal youngster to those who knew him. Like many who grew up in the 1960s, Chapman was swept up in the spirit of the times and by age 14, was even using heavy drugs like LSD on a regular basis. At age 17, however, Chapman suddenly proclaimed himself a born-again Christian. He renounced drugs and the hippie lifestyle and began attending prayer meetings and going to religious retreats.

Many of his friends at the time claimed the change came so suddenly they saw it as a type of personality split. Soon after, Chapman became a counselor at the YMCA —a job he relished with fervent devotion—and would remain there into his twenties. He was highly popular with the kids in his care; he dreamed of becoming a YMCA director and working abroad as a Christian missionary. Problems Despite his successes, Chapman was undisciplined and lacking in ambition. He briefly attended community college in Decatur, but soon dropped out due to the pressures of academic work. He subsequently traveled to Beirut, Lebanon as a YMCA counselor, only to be forced to leave when war broke out in that country. And after a brief stint at a camp for Vietnamese refugees in Arkansas, Chapman decided to give school another try. In 1976, Chapman enrolled at a religious college under the encouragement of his girlfriend, Jessica Blankenship, who was very devout and whom he had known since the second grade. However, he lasted only one semester before dropping out once more. Chapman’s failures at school caused his personality to undergo yet another drastic change. He began to question his purpose in life and his devotion to his faith.

His changing moods also put a strain on his relationship with Jessica and they broke up soon after. Chapman became increasingly despondent about these events in his life. He saw himself as a failure at everything he tried and frequently spoke of suicide. His friends were concerned for him, but could never have anticipated what this shift in Chapman’s temperament portended. Down a Dark Path Chapman was looking for a change and at the encouragement of his friend Dana Reeves—an aspiring policeman—decided to take shooting lessons and obtain a license to carry firearms. Soon after, Reeves managed to find Chapman a job as a security guard. But Chapman’s dark moods continued. He decided he needed to change his surroundings and moved to Hawaii in 1977, where he did attempt suicide but failed, ending up at a psychiatric facility. After two weeks as an outpatient there, he obtained a job in the hospital’s print shop and even volunteered on occasion in the psych ward. On a whim, Chapman decided to take a trip around the world. He fell in love with Gloria Abe, the travel agent who helped book his round-the-world trip. The two frequently corresponded through letters and upon returning to Hawaii, Chapman asked Abe to become his wife.

The couple married in the summer of 1979. Although Chapman’s life seemed to be improving, his downward spiral continued and his increasingly erratic behavior concerned his new wife. Abe claimed Chapman began drinking heavily, was abusive towards her and would frequently make threatening phone calls to complete strangers. His temper was short and he was prone to violent outbursts and would engage in screaming matches with his coworkers. Abe also noticed Chapman became increasingly obsessed with JD Salinger’s seminal 1951 novel The Catcher in the Rye . The Catcher in the Rye It is unclear when exactly Chapman discovered Salinger’s novel, The Catcher in the Rye, but one thing is for certain, by the late ‘70s it was beginning to have a profound affect on him. He identified deeply with the book’s protagonist, Holden Caulfield, an adolescent who railed against the seeming phoniness of the adults around him. In the book, Caulfield identified with children and saw himself as their savior from adulthood. Chapman came to see himself as a real-life Holden Caulfield. He even told his wife he wanted to change his name to Holden Caulfield and would rage about the phoniness of people and of celebrities in particular.

Hatred of John Lennon In October of 1980, Esquire magazine published a profile on John Lennon, which portrayed the former Beatle as a drug-addled millionaire recluse who had lost touch with his fans and his music. Chapman read the article with increasing anger and came to see Lennon as the ultimate hypocrite and a “phony” of the very type described in Salinger’s novel. He began reading everything he could about John Lennon, even making tapes of Beatles’ songs, which he would play over and over for his wife, changing the tapes’ speed and direction. He would listen to them while sitting nude in the dark, chanting, “John Lennon, I’m going to kill you, you phony bastard!” When Chapman discovered Lennon was planning to release a new album—his first in five years—his mind was made up. He would fly to New York City and shoot the singer. Preparing for the Assassination Chapman quit his job and bought a .38-caliber revolver from a gun shop in Honolulu. He then bought a one-way ticket to New York, told his wife goodbye, and departed, arriving in New York City on October 30, 1980.

Chapman checked into the Waldorf Astoria , the same hotel Holden Caulfield stayed at in The Catcher in the Rye, and set about seeing some sights. He frequently stopped at the Dakota to ask the doormen there about John Lennon’s whereabouts, without luck. The employees at the Dakota were used to fans asking such questions and generally refused to divulge any information about the various celebrities who resided in the building. Chapman had brought his revolver to New York, but figured he would buy bullets once he arrived. He now learned only residents of the city could legally purchase bullets there. Chapman thus flew down to his former home in Georgia for the weekend, where his old buddy Dana Reeves—by now a sheriff’s deputy—could help him procure what he needed. Chapman told Reeves he had been staying in New York, was concerned for his safety, and needed five hollow-nosed bullets, known for causing immense damage to their target. Now armed with gun and bullets, Chapman returned to New York; however, after all this time, Chapman’s resolve had diminished. He later claimed that he had a type of religious experience that convinced him what he was planning was wrong.

He called his wife and told her, for the first time, what he had planned to do. Gloria Abe was frightened by Chapman’s confession. However, she did not call the police but simply implored her husband to return home to Hawaii. He did so on November 12. Chapman’s change of heart did not last long. His strange behavior continued and on December 5, 1980, he once again departed for New York. This time, he would not be back. Second Trip to New York Upon his second trip to New York, Chapman checked into a local YMCA, because it was cheaper than a regular hotel room. However, he was not comfortable there and checked into the Sheraton Hotel on December 7. He made daily trips to the Dakota building, where he befriended several other John Lennon fans, as well as the building’s doorman, Jose Perdomo, whom he would pepper with questions about Lennon’s whereabouts. At the Dakota, Chapman also befriended an amateur photographer from New Jersey named Paul Goresh, who was a regular at the building and well known to the Lennons.

Goresh chatted with Chapman and would later comment how little Chapman seemed to know about John Lennon and the Beatles, considering he had claimed to be such an avid fan. Chapman would visit the Dakota regularly over the next two days, hoping each time to run into Lennon and commit his crime. December 8, 1980 On the morning of December 8th, Chapman dressed warmly. Before leaving his room he carefully arranged some of his most treasured belongings on a table. Among these items was a copy of the New Testament in which he had written the name “Holden Caulfield” as well as the name “Lennon” after the words “Gospel According to John.” He arranged the items for maximum effect, expecting the police to come looking through his room after his arrest. After leaving the hotel, he bought a fresh copy of The Catcher in the Rye and wrote the words “This is my statement” on its title page. Chapman’s plan had been to say nothing to police after the shooting, but to simply hand them a copy of the book by way of explaining his act.

Carrying the book and a copy of Lennon’s latest album Double Fantasy, Chapman then made his way to the Dakota where he stood chatting with Paul Goresh. At one point, a Lennon associate, Helen Seaman, arrived with Lennon’s five-year-old son Sean in tow. Goresh introduced Chapman to them as a fan who had come all the way from Hawaii. Chapman seemed elated and gushed about how cute the boy was. John Lennon, meanwhile, was having a busy day inside the Dakota. After posing with Yoko Ono for famous photographer Annie Leibovitz , Lennon got a haircut and gave his last ever interview, which was to Dave Sholin, a DJ from San Francisco. By 5 p.m. Lennon realized he was running late and needed to get over to the recording studio. Sholin offered the Lennons a ride in his limo since their own car had not yet arrived. Upon exiting the Dakota, Lennon was met by Paul Goresh, who introduced him to Chapman. Chapman handed over his copy of Double Fantasy for Lennon to sign. The star took the album, scribbled his signature, and handed it back.

The moment was captured by Paul Goresh and the resulting photograph —one of the last ever taken of John Lennon—shows a profile of the Beatle as he signs Chapman’s album, with the killer’s shadowy, deadpan face looming in the background. With that, Lennon entered the limo and headed for the studio. It is unclear why Chapman did not take that opportunity to kill John Lennon. He later recalled he was waging an inner battle. However, his obsession with killing Lennon did not abate. Shooting John Lennon Despite Chapman’s inner misgivings, the urge to shoot the singer was too overwhelming. Chapman remained at the Dakota well after Lennon and most of the fans had left, waiting for the Beatle to return. The limo carrying Lennon and Yoko Ono arrived back at the Dakota around 10:50 p.m. Yoko exited the vehicle first, followed by John. Chapman greeted Ono with a simple “Hello” as she passed. As Lennon passed him, Chapman heard a voice inside his head urging him on: “Do it! Do it!

Do it!” Chapman stepped into the carriageway of the Dakota, dropped to his knees, and fired two shots into John Lennon’s back. Lennon reeled. Chapman then pulled the trigger three more times. Two of those bullets landed in Lennon’s shoulder. The third went astray. Lennon managed to run into the Dakota’s lobby and clamber up the few steps leading to the building’s office, where he finally collapsed. Yoko Ono followed Lennon inside, screaming he’d been shot. The Dakota’s night man thought it was all a joke until he saw the blood pouring from Lennon’s mouth and chest. The night man promptly called 911 and covered Lennon with his uniform jacket. John Lennon Dies When the police arrived, they found Chapman sitting beneath the gate’s lantern calmly reading Catcher in the Rye. The killer made no attempt to escape and repeatedly apologized to the officers for the trouble he had caused. They promptly handcuffed Chapman and placed him in a nearby patrol car. The officers did not know the victim was the famous John Lennon. They simply determined his wounds were too serious to wait for an ambulance.

They placed Lennon in the backseat of one of their patrol cars and drove him to the emergency room at Roosevelt Hospital. Lennon was still alive but barely able to respond to the officers’ questions. The hospital was made aware of Lennon’s arrival and had a trauma team at the ready. They worked diligently to save Lennon’s life, but to no avail. Two of the bullets had pierced his lungs, while a third had hit his shoulder and then ricocheted inside his chest where it had damaged the aorta and cut his windpipe. John Lennon died at 11:07 pm on the night of December 8, due to massive internal hemorrhaging. Aftermath The news of Lennon’s death broke during ABC’s televised Monday night football game when sportscaster Howard Cosell announced the tragedy in the middle of a play. Soon after, fans from all over the city arrived at the Dakota, where they held vigil for the slain singer. As the news spread around the world, the public was shocked. It seemed a brutal, bloody end to the ‘60s. Mark David Chapman’s trial was short, as he had pled guilty to second-degree murder, claiming God had told him to do so.

When asked at his sentencing if he wanted to make a final statement, Chapman stood up and read a passage from Catcher in the Rye. The judge sentenced him to 20-years-to-life and Chapman remains imprisoned to this day, having lost several appeals for his parole. Tracing the Steps of John Lennon's Killer Tracing the Steps of John Lennon's Killer On 12/8/14 at 2:54 PM Newsweek Culture John Lennon Assassination Music Industry A few weeks after John Lennon was shot by obsessed fan Mark David Chapman, Newsweek devoted a special report to the singer, painstakingly tracing the steps of his killer and describing the mourning that followed the Dec. 8, 1980 shooting of the beloved Beatle. Read one of the issue stories, published in the Dec. 22, 1980 issue. Come together, he had once asked them in a song, and now they came, tens of thousands of them, to share their grief and shock at the news.

John Lennon, once the cheeky wit and sardonic soul of the Beatles, whose music had touched a generation and enchanted the world, had been slain on his doorstep by a confused, suicidal young man who had apparently idolized him. Along New York’s Central Park West and West 72nd Street, in front of the building where Lennon had lived and died, they stood for hours in tearful vigil, looking to each other and his music for comfort. The scene was repeated in Dallas’s Lee Park, at San Francisco’s Marina Green, on the Boston Common and in countless other gathering places around the country and the world. Young and old, black and white, they lit candles and softly sang his songs. “All you need is love,” they chanted in the rain. “Love is all you need.” As the unofficial leader of the Beatles, Lennon had exerted a numinous influence on the popular culture of the 1960s and 1970s. But in recent years he had been something of a recluse, a refugee from the maelstrom of pop superstardom who had abandoned the recording studio and public life in an effort to devote himself to raising his son Sean, now 5.

He emerged from his self-imposed retreat just five months ago, on the eve of his 40th birthday, a man finally at peace with himself, the creative juices once again flowing. He and his wife, Yoko Ono, released their first album in eight years and were putting the finishing touches on a second. He was, as he titled his most popular new song, “Starting Over,” “[I’m Only] 40,” he said cheerfully. “God willing, there are another 40 years of productivity to go.” But as he and Yoko returned home from a late-night session at a recording studio early last week, a 25-year-old doppelgänger named Mark David Chapman popped out of the darkness and shot Lennon. Try Newsweek for only $1.25 per week Distraught: The killing stunned the nation – and much of the world – as nothing had since the political assassinations of the 1960s. “At first, I didn’t believe he was really dead,” said Chris Backus, one of a thousand mourners who assembled the next day at the ABC entertainment complex in Los Angeles to pay tribute to Lennon. “When I realized it was true, then – bang!

– part of my childhood was gone forever.” As the news spread, radio stations throughout North America and Europe threw away their play lists and began broadcasting nothing but music by Lennon and the Beatles. Even Radio Moscow devoted 90 minutes to his songs. “The phones started ringing right after the news and they didn’t stop all day,” reported disc jockey Traver Hulse of KATT-FM in Oklahoma City. “It was like losing a President.” Distraught fans also descended on record stores, snapping up virtually every Lennon album available. “It was like they had just been robbed of something,” said manager Gary Crawford of Strawberries, a downtown Boston record store. “They wanted to replace that something right away.” The question asked over and over again was why – why had Chapman, a moody unemployed amateur guitar player who lived and worked in the South before moving to Hawaii three years ago, killed a man he was said to have admired for fifteen years? There were no simple answers. Police said Chapman told them of hearing “voices,” of having “a good side and a bad side,” of being annoyed at the way Lennon scrawled his autograph when Chapman first approached him six hours before the shooting.

Friends talked of Chapman’s obsessive identification with Lennon – how he used to play Beatles songs constantly on his guitar, how he taped the name “John Lennon” over his own on the ID badge he wore as a maintenance man at a Honolulu condominium, how he emulated Lennon by marrying a Japanese woman several years his senior. And psychologists noted that before taking Lennon’s life, Chapman had twice tried to take his own. “He had already tried to kill himself and he was unsuccessful, so he decided to kill Lennon,” speculated a forensic psychiatrist in Hawaii. “The homicide was simply a suicide turned backward.” Mementos and flowers left by fans lay around the Imagine mosaic in the Strawberry Fields section of Central Park on the 33th anniversary of the death of former Beatle John Lennon, in New York, December 8, 2013. Eduardo Munoz/Reuters ‘Normal Dude’: Chapman had apparently been planning to shoot Lennon for weeks. Late in October he quit his job as a maintenance man and applied to the Honolulu police for a pistol permit. Since he had no criminal record, the permit was granted – and on Oct.

27, he went to J&S Sales, Ltd., in Honolulu and paid $169 for a five-shot Charter Arms .38 special. “Just a normal dude,” says J&S manager Tom Grahovac. At about the same time, Chapman called local art dealer Pat Carlson, who had sold him a number of expensive lithographs. He wanted to sell one, he told her, because he needed to raise some money. He also called the employment counselor who had found him the condominium job. “He said to me that he had something really big he was planning to do,” she recalled. A week or so later, Chapman left Honolulu for Atlanta, Ga., where he had grown up and gone to school. He told acquaintances that he was in town to see his father, but he never did. Instead, he dropped in on an old girlfriend and visited his high-school chorus teacher, Madison Short. Though the girlfriend’s parents said he seemed depressed, Short recalled him insisting that “he was happy, content with his lot in life.” Chapman said nothing about going to New York or seeking out John Lennon. After a few days he returned home to Honolulu, but on Dec. 5 he was off again.

His wife, Gloria, had no idea of his plans. “She knew he was going somewhere,” Gloria’s lawyer, Brook Hart, said, “but she didn’t know precisely where.” Boast: He arrived in New York on Saturday, Dec. 6, and checked into a $16.50-a-night room at a YMCA just nine blocks from the Dakota, the elegant, century-old apartment building where Lennon and his family lived. That afternoon, taxi driver Mark Snyder picked up Chapman in his cab. According to Snyder, Chapman boasted that he was Lennon’s sound engineer, that he was in the midst of a recording session with him and that he had just learned that Lennon and his long-estranged songwriting partner Paul McCartney were going to make an album together. The same day, Chapman was seen for the first time loitering near an entrance to the Dakota. No one took much notice, the building is home to a number of celebrities – among them, conductor Leonard Bernstein, actress Lauren Bacall and comedienne Gilda Radner – and sidewalk gawkers are a common sight. Chapman reappeared outside the Dakota on Sunday as well.

He also changed hotels on Sunday, moving from the Y to a more comfortable $82-a-day room at the Sheraton Centre farther downtown. On Monday evening Chapman’s and Lennon’s paths finally crossed. Once again Chapman had spent the afternoon on the sidewalk outside the Dakota – this time in the company of Paul Goresh, a Beatles fan and amateur photographer from North Arlington, N.J. Goresh, who was also hoping to catch a glimpse of Lennon, said Chapman struck up a conversation as they waited. “He said he spent the last three days trying to see Lennon and get an autograph,” Goresh recalled. At about 5 p.m., Lennon and his wife finally emerged from the bilding on their way to The Record Plant Studios on West 44th Street. Chapman approached Lennon timidly, holding out a copy of John and Yoko’s latest album, “Double Fantasy.” Lennong took it and scrawled his signature (“John Lennon 1980”) across the cover, while Goresh snapped a picture. Chapman was delighted. “John Lennon signed my album,” he exulted to Goresh after the Lennons had left.

“Nobody in Hawaii is going to believe me.” The two men remained outside the Dakota for another two hours. When Goresh finally decided to go home, Chapman tried to change his mind. Lennon, he said, “should be home soon and you can get your album signed.” Goresh replied that he could get Lennon’s autograph another day. “I’d wait,” Chapman advised somberly. “You never know if you’ll see him again.” The Lennons worked at The Record Plant until 10:30 p.m., mixing the sound for a new single, tentatively titled “Walking on Thing Ice.” “We had planned to go out to eat after leaving the recording studio,” Yoko said later,” but we decided to go straight home instead.” Their rented limousine delivered them to the Dakota’s 72nd Street entrance at about 10:50 p.m. The limousine could have driven into the entranceway, but it stopped at the curb. Yoko got out first, with John trailing a few steps behind. As he passed under the ornate archway leading to the Dakota’s interior courtyard, he heard a voice call out from behind. “Mr.

Lennon.” He turned to see Chapman crouched 5 feet away gripping his .38 special with both hands. Before Lennon had a chance to react, Chapman opened fire, pumping four bullets into his back and left shoulder. “I’m shot!” Lennon gasped. Leaving a trail of blood behind him, he staggered six steps into the doorman’s office, where he collapsed. Susananah Greenwood from Worcester in Massachussets, U.S. lights a candle by the legendary John Lennon's Wall in the historical center of Prague, December 8, 2010, to commemorate his murder outside his Manhattan apartment building in New York 30 years ago. Petr Josek Snr/Reuters Calm: While Yoko cradled her husband’s head in her arm, Chapman dropped his gun, and the doorman kicked it away. “Do you know what you just did?” the doorman asked Chapman dazedly. “I just shot John Lennon,” came the calm reply. Summoned by the doorman, police were on the scene within minutes. Chapman waited for them, thumbing through a copy of J.D.

Salinger’s classic novel of adolescent rebellion, “The Catcher in the Rye.” While two officers frisked and handcuffed him, two others attended to Lennon. “I turned him over,” said Patrolman Anthony Palma. “Red is all I saw.” Palma turned to a rookie cop, who was on the verge of being sick. “The guy is dying,” he said. “Let’s get him out of here.” Lennon, semiconscious and bleeding profusely, was placed in the back seat of Officer James Moran’s patrol car. “Do you know who you are?” Moran asked him. Lennon couldn’t speak. “He moaned and nodded his head as if to say yes,” Moran said. While Moran raced Lennon to Roosevelt Hospital fifteen blocks away, Palma followed in his car with Yoko. “Tell me it isn’t true, tell me he’s all right,” she implored him over and over again. Though doctors pronounced Lennon dead on arrival at Roosevelt, a team of seven surgeons labored desperately to revive him. But his wounds were too severe. There were three holes in his chest, two in his back and two in his left shoulder.

“It wasn’t possible to resuscitate him by any means,” said Dr. Stephen Lynn, the hospital’s director of emergency services. “He’d lost 3 to 5 quarts of blood from the gun wounds, about 80 per cent of his blood volume.” After working on Lennon for about half an hour, the surgeons gave up, and Lynn went to break the news to Yoko. “Where is my husband?” she asked franctically. “I want to be with my husband. He would want me to be with him. Where is he?” Lynn took a deep breath. “We have very bad news,” he told her. “Unfortunately, in spite of our massive efforts, your husband is dead. There was no suffering at the end.” Yoko refused to comprehend the message. “Are you saying he is sleeping?” she sobbed. Accompanied by David Geffen, whose Geffen Records was producing the Lennons’ new album, Yoko returned home about midnight.

She made three phone calls, to “the three people that John would have wanted to know” – his 17-year-old son by his first marriage, Julian; his aunt, Mimi Smith, who had raised him, and his onetime collaborator, Paul McCartney. Shrine: As word of the shooting spread throughout the city, a spontaneous vigil began to form outside the Dakota. By 1 a.m., a crowd of nearly a thousand had gathered. They sang Lennon songs, lit candles and turned the building’s gate into an impromptu shrine, covering it with flowers and pictures of John and Yoko. Within minutes, news of Lennon’s death had been flashed round the world, sparking a public outpouring not seen since John Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. President Carter spoke of the irony that Lennon “died by violence, though he had long campaigned for peace”; President-elect Reagan pronounced it “a great tragedy.” In London, a portrait of the Beatles draped with a floral tribute was placed at the entrance to the Tate Gallery. “We usually do this when a British artist whose work is represented in the Tate dies,” a spokesman said.

“But we thought John Lennon was a special case.” In Lennon’s hometown of Liverpool, the lord mayor announced plans to hold a memorial service for him at the city’s giant cathedral, and local teen-agers placed wreaths at the parking lot that was once the site of the Cavern club, where the Beatles had gotten their start. In New York, hundreds of thousands of mourners planned to gather for a Sunday afternoon memorial in Central Park, not far from the Dakota. Of the three other former Beatles, only Ringo Starr came to New York to be with Yoko. George Harrison canceled a recording session and reportedly went into seclusion. And McCartney, who called his ex-partner “a great man who will be sadly missed,” said he would mourn Lennon in private. Yoko also stayed out of sight. Two days after the shooting, she released a poignant statement describing how she told Sean of his father’s death. “Now Daddy is part of God,” she reported Sean as saying.

“I guess when you die you become much more bigger because you’re part of everything.” Yoko also announced there would be no funeral; after Lennon’s body was cremated privately, she invited mourners to participate – “from wherever you are at the time” – in a ten-minute silent vigil on Sunday afternoon. “John loved and prayed for the human race,” she said. “Please pray the same for him.” Chapman, meanwhile, was charged with second-degree murder (since New York has abandoned the death penalty, first-degree murder is no longer used as a charge) and ordered to undergo 30 days of extensive psychiatric testing. He was first sent, under heavy guard, to a cell at the city’s most famous Bellevue Hospital, where he was placed on a 24-hour “suicide watch.” But as fears of a Jack Ruby-style revenge killing grew, officials decided to transport him to the more remote jail on Riker’s Island. Related Stories Lennon's On Sale Again Chapman’s second court-appointed attorney, Jonathan Marks, who was assigned the case after the accused murderer’s first lawyer quit, said his client probably would plead not guilty by reason of insanity.

“Obviously, Mark Chapman’s mental state is a critical issue in this case,” Marks told reporters. “In order to convict, the [prosecution] must show criminal intent.” Though Lennon appealed to people of all ages, races and classes, it was the baby-boom generation, now in its 20s and 30s, that was hardest hit by his murder. “We grew up together,” said Julie Cohen, a 27-year-old teacher who was among the 2,000 mourners who gathered at San Francisco’s Marina Green last week to honor him. “I felt there must be some way it could not be true, that it must be a mistake.” Secretary Christy Lyou, 32, who showed up along with 2,500 others in Dallas’s Lee Park for a similar memorial, said: “It’s the last nail in the coffin of the ‘60s.” However keen the sense of loss, those closest to Lennon rejected the notion that his death marked the passing of an era. “We had planned so much together,” Yoko said the day her husband was cremated. “We had talked about living until we were 80.

We even drew up lists of all the things we could do for all those years. Then, it was all over. But that doesn’t mean the message should be over. The music will live on.” And with it, so will John Lennon. - By Allan J. Mayer with Susan Agrest and Jacob Young in New York and bureau reports Mark Chapman: The Assassination of John | Crime and Investigation Mark Chapman: The Assassination of John Timeline The bizarre obsession that led to the murder of the Beatles singer/songwriter. Mark David Chapman was born in Fort Worth, Texas on 10th May 1955, the first child of David and Diane Chapman. His father David was a staff sergeant in the Air Force, who left the armed services shortly after his birth to pursue an engineering degree, which took the family to Atlanta, Georgia. A sister, Susan, was born in 1962, when Chapman was seven years old. He was not a popular child growing up and poor at sports. As a result, he developed a rich imagination, to insulate himself against the jibes of his classmates. Chapman claimed that his father was emotionally distant and abused his mother.

Consequently he and his sister were terrified of their father. Outwardly, the family were viewed as a happy one, and Chapman appeared a normal, well-adjusted boy, with a passion for The Beatles, and John Lennon in particular. Until his early teens, that is, when Chapman discovered marijuana, graduating to heroin and LSD, and gravitating towards a drug-dominated social set, which fit well with his counter-culture taste in music. Then, just as suddenly, his rebellious phase ended. At 16 he became an evangelical Christian, and his temperament changed just as abruptly. He acquired a born-again Christian girlfriend, Jessica Blankenship, and a job as a counsellor at a YMCA summer camp, where he was very popular with his young charges. Chapman’s hero-worship of Lennon persisted, until Lennon was quoted in the press as saying “We're more popular than Jesus Christ now,” at which point he renounced his one-time hero. At around the same time, he claims that the reading of Salinger’s novel ‘The Catcher in the Rye’, about a confused teenager, also influenced him deeply.

Chapman continued working within the YMCA, serving on its international programme, briefly in Lebanon and then with Vietnamese refugees back in the United States, at Fort Chaffee, where his popularity with the children he supervised continued unabated. By early 1976, after the refugee resettlement programme had run its course, Chapman joined girlfriend, Jessica Blankenship, at college in Tennessee. His studies suffered, however, when he became obsessed with a single infidelity he had committed with another camp worker, and he grew increasingly paranoid and depressed, and considered suicide. He returned to his home town, and found work as a security guard, but the depression continued. Chapman resolved to buy himself a trip of a lifetime, to Hawaii, spend his life savings, and then kill himself. He flew to Honolulu, and spent his savings, but failed to carry through the suicide plan, flew home again, fought with his parents, and then flew back to Hawaii again in May 1977. This time he went as far as trying to gas himself in his car but the plastic hose he attached to the exhaust melted and he survived.

Chapman checked himself into a mental facility and continued to volunteer at the hospital after his discharge, which resulted in a full-time maintenance position there, where he remained until April 1978. Having again successfully combated his depression for a time, Chapman planned a six-week trip around the world, which he booked through a Japanese American travel agent named Gloria Abe. The relationship between them developed into a romance and they were eventually married on 2nd June 1979. This happiness was short-lived as Chapman began drinking heavily again, lost his job at the hospital and developed a new obsession with expensive contemporary art. He purchased paintings by Salvador Dali and Norman Rockwell, and amassed debt that his new job, as a security guard, could not hope to support. One obsession led to another and, by March 1980, Chapman became determined to get out of debt, enforcing strict spending limits on himself and Gloria, which resulted in a paying off of the debt by mid-August that year. By this time Chapman was cycling through new obsessions at an increasing rate, alternately ridding himself of possessions and then replacing them, which placed a severe strain on the marriage.

He started to read voraciously, returning again to his favourite fictional character, Holden Caulfield, the protagonist in ‘The Catcher in the Rye’, even considering changing his name to that of his fictional hero. Chapman seemed to alternate between recognising, and rejecting, that he had a mental illness, retreating more fully into the fantasy world that he had conjured up in his youth. According to Chapman, the book ‘John Lennon: One Day at a Time’, by Anthony Fawcett, proved a conclusive catalyst for the events which transpired before the year’s end. He was incensed by what he saw as the hypocrisy of his former idol, who preached simplicity, peace and love and yet lived a life of unparalleled luxury in New York. His obsession grew and he decided to go to New York and kill John Lennon. On 23rd October 1980 he resigned from his security guard post, bought a gun (but no bullets) four days later, and flew to New York on 30th October 1980, all financed via a $5000 loan from his father-in-law.

He decided to live it up, as he had when he flew to Hawaii on his first suicide mission, and checked in to the exclusive Waldorf Hotel. He spent some time reconnoitring the Dakota Apartments building, the New York home of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, but encountered a major flaw in his assassination plan; the law in New York forbade the purchase of bullets by civilians. He was forced to travel to Atlanta to see a friend, who had become a deputy sheriff, who provided him with the ammunition he required. By 10th November he was back in New York, when Chapman claims that the chance viewing of the film ‘Ordinary People’, in which Timothy Hutton plays a suicidal teenager caught up in the midst of a dysfunctional family, provided a reality check to his obsession. He called his wife, told her that he loved her, that he had defeated his demons, and that he was coming home. This defeat was short-lived however and, after a fortnight of erratic behaviour back in Hawaii, he again left his extremely concerned wife.

Chapman returned to New York on 6th December, where he checked into a local YMCA, and began staking out Lennon’s apartment building, also buying a copy of Lennon’s new album, ‘Double Fantasy’. The next day, he moved from the YMCA to the Sheraton Centre Hotel but was again unsuccessful in his quest to spot Lennon. The following day, Monday, however, his luck had improved. Not only did Chapman get to shake hands with Lennon’s five-year-old son, Sean, but in the early afternoon, whilst talking to the Dakota’s doorman, John Lennon and Yoko Ono appeared from inside, en route to a studio appointment, and Lennon graciously autographed the dumb-struck Chapman’s copy of ‘Double Fantasy’. Chapman was so overcome by Lennon’s presence, and evident sincerity, that all thoughts of shooting him were temporarily forgotten. Chapman claims that he spent the rest of that day fighting his demons, praying for help from God to overcome his desire to kill Lennon.

The demons won out and, when Ono and Lennon returned to the Dakota at 10.50 pm, on Monday 8th December 1980, Chapman shot Lennon four times in the back, in front of his wife, on the steps to the building’s main entrance. By 11.15 pm Lennon had died of exsanguination, en route to the Roosevelt Hospital. Chapman made no effort to flee and was overpowered by the doorman, with whom he had been chatting earlier in the day. He was apologetic when the police arrived, claiming to be sorry for putting them to so much trouble. When he had been handcuffed and placed in the police car, Yoko Ono came over to look at him, without saying a word. Within minutes of the news announcements of John Lennon’s death, crowds began to assemble at both the Dakota and Roosevelt Hospital. Fearing reprisals from enraged fans, police kept Chapman under close guard during psychiatric evaluations and court appearances, and otherwise kept him at the high security jail on Riker’s Island. John Lennon's Death Marked the End of an Era, TIME Wrote in 1980 TIME The Dec.

22, 1980, cover of TIME The killing, on Dec. 8, 1980, marked a major social shift John Lennon’s death 34 years ago today triggered the same shock and outpouring of grief as the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and John F. Kennedy. So wrote critic Jay Cocks for his 1980 TIME cover story about the legacy of the late Beatle and his death by the hands of Mark David Chapman. The touching tribute — comments from Bruce Springsteen that are included in the piece may bring tears to your eyes — featured one memorable quote from Lennon’s wife, Yoko Ono: “This is not the end of an era,” she said in the days after he was killed. “The ’80s are still going to be a beautiful time, and John believed it.” But in his piece, Cocks makes the case for why Ono’s words were more wishful thinking than a truthful declaration. The band had broken up a decade before, but Lennon’s death signaled a shift more serious than the Beatles’ dissolution ever did. After all, the music of the Beatles would be around indefinitely, whether or not the band continued to record together.

When Lennon died at age 40, however, everyone who had grown up with the Beatles was approaching middle age too. In addition to their sadness about Lennon’s death, they could not ignore their own mortality. “For everyone who cherished the sustaining myth of the Beatles,” Cocks wrote, “the murder was something else. It was an assassination, a ritual slaying of something that could hardly be named. Hope, perhaps; or idealism. Or time. Not only lost, but suddenly dislocated, fractured.” There was an innocence and idealism to Beatles songs, Cocks explained, that stood in stark contrast to how Lennon died. Even kids could sense the loss: “I recognize the end of an era — my mom’s,” 16-year-old Gretchen Steininger told TIME. In the days after Lennon died, a Florida teenager and a 30-something man in Utah committed suicide and left notes behind that referenced depression over Lennon’s death. Mark David Chapman is still alive. He’s now 59, and he’s been denied parole eight times — the most recent was August of this year — since he was imprisoned in 1981.

(Ono has publicly campaigned against his release.) “At that time, I wasn’t thinking about anybody else, just me,” said Chapman , who can try again in 2016, at this year’s hearing. “But now, you know, obviously through people’s letters and through things I hear a lot of people were affected here. I am sorry for causing that type of pain. I am sorry for being such an idiot and choosing the wrong way for glory.” Read the full 1980 cover story about John Lennon, here in the TIME Vault: When the Music Died Sign up for

Question: In which year was John Lennon assassinated?
Answer: 1980